An Apology of Sorts

I have a friend who is brilliant and writes stories with characters so well developed they make me cry. This friend publishes on AO3, although with a bit of polishing I think they could self-publish and find a whole new audience. But they have no confidence in their stories. So they say “Here, read this, and I’m sorry.” Always, there’s that apology. And it’s unneeded, which I’ve told them over and over. I not only read the stories, I reread them because they are just that good. The thing is, I do it, too. I ask, “Please read my story,” and then, at least internally, I add, “And I’m sorry. It’s not very good.”

Headphones is that and more for me.

I first published Headphones in 2015 as an online serial, posting “snapshots” every day for one year and one day. It was a labor of love, something I did for myself simply to prove that I could. Between the end of 2015 and the start of 2018 I continued to write while also studying the craft, looking up tutorials, and reading blog posts by authors I admired. I settled into m/m romance, writing four more books with a better understanding of the craft. When I pulled Headphones back out in 2018 with the intent of rewriting it into book-form, I was slightly overwhelmed. It was 180k words, written in present tense with a dozen characters whose stories were too intertwined to separate.

What was I going to do with this behemoth? It had too many tropes, too many characters, too many storylines. But it was my baby, my firstborn, and I didn’t want it to languish, forgotten. I buckled down and I rewrote it, and if anyone notices that the one m/m relationship in the book has the most page time, well, that’s to be expected.

So this is my apology, if it’s needed. Headphones is my vanity project. I wrote it for me, and I published it because I love Blu Mick and their friends from The House. It’ll never make any money; therefore, I couldn’t afford to put much into it. (No money means no editors.) Plus, it was my “learning on the job” project. Which resulted in me downloading the wrong version and then taking a week after it was published to figure out how to fix it. (If you read the first typo-filled version, I’m so very, very sorry!)

If you read it, thank you very much. And if you enjoy it, or any part of it, I’m glad. (And if you leave a review, I’ll probably love you forever!)

If you would like to read Headphones, it's available on Amazon and is KU.